Objective: This study aimed to examine the benefits of using smell as a memory trigger during reminiscence therapy for community-dwelling older adults, focusing on its effects on loneliness and depression.
Methods: Seventy-nine community-dwelling older adults were randomly allocated to either an intervention or a control group. Participants in the intervention group underwent a total of eight 40-min. reminiscence therapy sessions once a week that used smell as a trigger. The control group underwent similar reminiscence therapy but only used themed conversations. Their responses were assessed pre- and post-intervention using the UCLA Loneliness Scale Version 3 (UCLA LS3), which evaluates loneliness, and the Geriatric Depression Scale-15-Japanese, which measures the state of depression.
Results: The pre-intervention comparison of the participants’ characteristics and each evaluation item showed significant differences (p = 0.030) between the two groups' Olfactory Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) scores. Subsequently, we performed Analysis of Covariance via repeated measurements, using Olfactory VAS as the covariate, and found significant interactions in UCLA LS3 (p = 0.006) alone. To identify items for consideration during interventions, we examined factors related to post-intervention UCLA LS3 scores. Our results showed that the notion of usefulness, by which participants perceived the smell triggers to be useful for inducing reminiscence (p = 0.045), was significantly related to pre-intervention UCLA LS3 scores (p < 0.001) in the intervention group. Conclusion: These findings show that using smell as a trigger during reminiscence therapy can effectively alleviate loneliness and suggest the need to prepare appropriate odorants for facilitating reminiscence.

Authors:
Hideaki Hanaoka, Hiroshima University, Japan
Daiki Nakashima, Naragakuen University, Japan
Kyosuke Yorozuya, Seijoh University, Japan
Fumiko Kaneko, Hiroshima University, Japan
Mineko Wada, Hiroshima University, Japan
Hitoshi Okamura, Hiroshima University, japan

About the Presenter(s)
Professor Hideaki Hanaoka is currently working as a professor at Hiroshima University. He has been conducting research on reminiscence and is currently focusing on the effects of using odour as a reminiscence stimulus.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Tuesday Schedule

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